Derek Mahon (1941–) was born in Belfast 1941 and educated at the Royal
Academical Institution and Trinity College, Dublin. He traveled in North
America and France before returning to Ireland in 1967, and moved to London in
1970. He has worked as a screenwriter, theatre critic, poetry editor, and
features editor for Vogue, and he is a regular contributor to the
Irish Times. He has lectured at a number of universities in the United
States and Europe. His poetry collections include Night-Crossing (1968),
Lives (1972), The Snow Party (1975), Poems 1962–1978
(1979), Courtyards in Delft (1981), The Hunt By Night (1982),
Selected Poems (1991), and Collected Poems (1999). His
translations include High Time (a version of Molière's A School for
Husbands), The Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet, Euripedes's
The Baccae, and Racine's Phaedra. His has been awarded the Irish
American Foundation Award, a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
The Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Prize, the American Ireland Fund
Literary Award, The C. K. Scott Moncreiff Translation Prize (for The
Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet), and the Eric Gregory Award.